I’ve also stressed that they are incredibly cautious people because once they’re wealthy, the thing that they’re most terrified of is losing their wealth, and as a consequence, they’re not entrepreneurs.
That doesn’t mean to say they weren’t entrepreneurs on their way to becoming wealthy, but once they’ve got there, they are no longer entrepreneurs, which is a point that many people seem to have missed.
So, getting wealthy is an incentive to be an entrepreneur. The existence of wealthy people shows that some were incentivised to be entrepreneurs. If we nick all the money off the rich people then we will disincentivise the next generation of entrepreneurs – there will be no point in trying to become wealth because you’ll not be allowed to be wealthy.
This is not the way to make the future richer now, is it?
It’s another argument from imagination. He doesn’t know any rich people, except the ones he happens to meet in court from time to time.
If they’re not doing it themselves the money that “rich” people have is invested and being used by other people to build new things. You’ll never get this into his thick head. It would be easier to teach quantum mechanics to cats.
So how does he explain billionaires? Wouldn’t someone with £100m become “incredibly cautious” if Murphy was correct?
I see the oil sheikhs have pitched in.
Murphy’s always discovering things that no one else seems to have noticed. He must actually think he’s a legitimate genius.
He deliberately ignores the fact that the external funding of start-up enterprises (aka venture capital) comes in large part from the wealthy: certainly not from the un-wealthy (who really don’t have an appetite for the risk, in part because they don’t have the money), not from the state (that can’t work out what’s going on), and only to a limited degree from regulated, cautious pension funds.
There is no need for more than a one-part series about whether or not we need Richard Murphy.
“t would be easier to teach quantum mechanics to cats.”
Cats eschew quantum mechanics because half of them end up dead in a box.
Based on some quite famous people, and some of the ones I’ve met, this is bollocks.
Dyson, Elon, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett could have all stopped earlier and lived very comfortably.
Something most people don’t really grasp about entrepreneurs is that it’s not about a big house, cars, art collections. It’s the mission. People who go into being entrepreneurs are people who are comfortable with living in an RV for years. Yeah, you get a nice life out of it too, but that’s not what drives them. Like Bill Gates basically got bored with Microsoft. And he had money. So go do other things with that money.
The people who do the big house, cars, art collections are mostly the wives and children of entrepreneurs. The ex-Mrs Bezos, ex-Mrs Gates and ex-Mrs Jobs are all pissing money their husbands money away on a load of Me Me Me Political Stuff which is just a status thing, like having fancy gardens at Chenonceaux. LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, climate change. But the climate change stuff isn’t like building fusion power. It’s advocacy. It’s all about having their name slapped all over it.
It is clear that he has no understanding of the entrepreneurial mindset.
The mindset he is talking about is basically people like me. If I won £5m tomorrow, I’d pack in the day job, take up poetry and charidee work and look to live off and preserve that pot. That is not how entrepreneurial people approach life. That is why some of them become billionaires and I never will.
I’m fine with that by the way; I earn a decent chunk and live comfortably. I have zero jealousy of billionaires because I know I would never be prepared to put the graft in.
Spud’s failure to understand all of this is a pretty clear indicator that he has zero empathy.
Also misses the point that a wealthy person can support a long shot venture without risking it all. If you’re worth £50M you can very safely put £100k out for a start-up or put it into a VC fund.
People I know who are moderately wealthy (don’t know many really wealthy ones well) aren’t “terrified” of losing their money, mostly because they’re managing it wisely. I suspect the really wealthy ones are doing likewise.
This obsession with rich people and their money just screams loser to me. I’m like Marius, I’m not rich but I get by and I’m happy with what I’ve got. I consider that my life is a success, not by having made it big but succeeding on my own terms.
VC funds often require investors to be accredited, meet minimum investment thresholds (typically $100K-$1M), and commit capital for 7-10 years.
If you are not wealthy enough to take the risk then supporting entrepreneurs is not an easy option .
Commie dick Murphy has no friends.
A friend would tell him how stupid he is being. The dick keeps on going, uncorrected.
Murphy is like a caveman with a drag harness round his waist who chucks rocks at the other caveman who has just invented the “unnecessary” wheel.
Stony @ 10.22, agree 100%. I’ve made some crap decisions and ‘lost’ a good few quid through one thing or another, but if you’d have offered me what I have now (including family, friends, health) when I started work at the age of 16 I would’ve bitten your hand off.
“This is not the way to make the future richer now, is it?”
They don’t want a richer world, but rather a poorer one that consumes less (otherwise we’re all going to boil to death, or is it freeze?) Sometimes they are quite open about it. They can be pretty effective in bringing it about.
The man is an unmitigated git. I have been fortunate to meet, and in some cases work with, some wealthy to quite wealthy people – in the $30-$50M range for a couple, and one guy who was worth about $300M. Not in Bezos or Gates territory, but they had done well for themselves. All of them had started with much less – two were from a nice middle-income background, but started everything off on their own, with no family money, one had some small family money, but grew it quite incredibly. All of them were entreprenurial, risk-taking, and ambitious, easily into (or past) what would be a normal retirement age. They weren’t driven by the big house / car / vacation home – they were driven by the need to create something for themselves and see it grow – the house / car / etc were nice – but not the goal. The goal was the growth and being in charge.
Murphy must be only adult in the world outside North Korea (and a few similar regimes) who has never heard of Elon Musk.
After making his first $bn in PayPal he didn’t become incredible cautious, he spent it (and various of his friends’ $bns) on building Tesla.
Murphy does not believe James Dyson exists.
Has he never seen Dragon’s Den on telly?
@ Phil Janes
Dragon’s Den is not politically correct